Film dialogue is characterised by strong emotionality expressed through many linguistic traits, not least swearing and taboo language. Using the Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue (PCFD), this short-term diachronic study explores how a set of English intensifying expletives, namely bloody, fucking, (god)damn, the fuck and the hell, are deployed in Anglophone films and how they are dubbed into Italian in a timespan of more than two decades (1995-2017. Results show a significant growth in the frequency of intensifying expletives in English film dialogue over time confirming the increase in swearing in Anglophone telecinematic products (Azzaro 2018). The opposite direction is taken by dubbing, where omission and mitigation of expletives have increased considerably in the last decade, leading to a reduction of the pragmatic force of the original texts. The wide repertoire of translational routines employed in dubbing indicates an orientation to both source language expressions (calques) and target language patterns. These findings lead us to reflect on censorship, source text interference, target text adaptation, hybridisation and the increase of phraseological variability over time, which testifies to the dynamicity of translational routines in dubbing and to the distinctiveness of audiovisual discourse in itself.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of the English language on the Italian language of dubbed animated films through the presence of direct and indirect borrowings – i.e., Anglicisms and calques – over a period of 27 years. The analysis is based on a corpus of 18 English- language animated films produced by Disney and Disney-Pixar between 1994 and 2019. By analysing the transcriptions of the English and Italian dialogues, the paper examines the degree of Anglicisation of dubbed Italian. It assesses the presence of direct English borrowings, explores the way in which specific words or expressions typical of conversational English are rendered in dubbed Italian, and ascertains whether specific indirect borrowings quoted in the literature on dubbese are actually present in the dubbed dialogues of animated films. The linguistic analysis of the English and Italian dialogues is complemented with comments by dubbing professionals on dubbing practice and on their relationship with the English language.

This article analyses the occurrences of the discourse marker combination okay then and their respective interactional functions as found in the first three seasons available to date of the award-winning American TV series Fargo, which premiered in 2014 and is still ongoing. In addition, the translation strategies adopted to render the various functions of okay then in the Italian dubbed version are commented on in order to verify the extent to which they reflect the original. As far as the methodology is concerned, all instances of okay then were initially retrieved by means of a corpus-based analysis of the script; subsequently, each scene containing the discourse marker combination considered was viewed in the original version so as to detect both co-textual and contextual cues which could explain its functions; finally, the selected scenes were watched in the dubbed version with a view to determining how okay then was translated into Italian. Given the fundamental role played by discourse markers and, as a consequence, by discourse marker combinations in spoken communication, the examination of their use in a specific audiovisual genre, such as that of TV series, appeared worthwhile. It is hoped that the analysis carried out could also show how the study of discourse marker combinations in audiovisual translation might be relevant for pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics and linguistics in general.

On the basis of Adler’s (1975) concept of the ‘dark side of emancipation’ of women, the following study reflects on the ideological implications that the shifts of interpersonal meanings in translation may bear on the construction of televised ‘Camorra ladies’. Specific attention will be paid to the gender-related discourses of the source Neapolitan culture, and the way they are deliberately and often misleadingly re-crafted and re-stereotyped in AVT according to the target audience’s pre-supposed cognitive models. The research uses data from the Gomorrah Project Corpus (GPC) comprising the Italian and English subtitles of the first 3 seasons of Gomorrah – The Series. The corpus, which is part of a larger research project, has been annotated to allow the identification of given linguistic traits that are peculiar to the female characters’ idiolects in both the Italian subtitles and their English adaptation. Therefore, the analysis of such data will allow for a better understanding of the cultural repercussions in the translation of specific identity cues that are particularly related to the local criminal context represented in the TV series.

The present paper explores the audiovisual translation of multilingual TV series, in particular of US products which feature characters of Latino origin – i.e., Mexican, Venezuelan and Cuban – whose speech includes the use of Spanish. It focuses on dubbing, from English/Spanish into Italian, through the investigation of a small but relevant corpus of TV shows, namely ABC’s Ugly Betty (2006-2010), The CW Channel’s and subsequently Netflix’s Jane the Virgin (2014-2019) and the original Netflix’s One Day at a Time (2017-2020), spanning a period of 14 years. The paper aims to trace clues to a possible diachronic evolution in dubbing language variation, through the qualitative analysis of instances of multilingualism in significant episodes from these series. Within a Descriptive Translation Studies framework (Díaz-Cintas 2004; Assis Rosa 2018) and adopting a combination of theories (Venuti 1995) and taxonomies (Corrius and Zabalbeascoa 2011; Chaume 2012; Ranzato 2016), the paper illustrates the macro- and micro- translation strategies and techniques employed to render the multicultural background of characters, conveyed in the source texts at the levels of marked accents, code-mixing, code-switching and entire dialogues. Findings suggest that, in the dubbed episodes, the multicultural identity of the characters is increasingly preserved in the most recent Netflix series. Results are interpreted in relation to issues of diversity and representation, within a paradigm of audiovisual translation as a social activity and an intercultural experience.

The butler or housekeeper character speaking the upper-crust variety of British English to match that of his/her masters has been a common topos in films and TV shows, and one which does not always accord with reality: even if the employees of upper class families are usually expected by audiences to speak with flawless received pronunciation, other renditions of this character type, probably more adherent to the code of realism, show how their authors have sometimes opted for portrayals in nonstandard brushstrokes. This article focuses on the linguistic representation and relative translations into Italian of the ‘butler’ character as portrayed in a significant number of films and TV series from the 1930s (and more precisely from Trouble in Paradise, Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) to nowadays (the Gotham series, Bruno Heller, 2014-2019). Through memorable and lesser-known depictions that span the history of cinema and television, the analysis of original and translated dialogue exchanges explores and questions the aura of fixedness and immutability that this character projects by highlighting meaningful shifts in its representation and testifying to the narrative importance of this fictional type, often the catalyst of social tensions, comedic virtuosities or dramatic plot twists.

Based on the life of Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody (Singer and Fletcher 2018) is a popular cinematic product that received little critical acclaim on its release; however, it became the biggest grossing music biopic of all time. Rocketman (Fletcher 2019), an impressionistic portrayal of Elton John’s rise to fame was released in its wake. Both are among the most widely debated films to emerge in recent years. Paradigmatic of the modern biopic, they recount the lives of iconic rock stars who struggle with fame, identity, and most crucially, their sexuality in seventies and eighties Britain. From a cross-cultural perspective, conveying the narratives of a more or less explicit homosexuality set in a specific spatio-temporal context to a mainstream international audience presents complex translational implications. Focusing on Anglo/Italian contexts, Ranzato (2012: 382) has argued, “the language of homosexuals has long remained in Italy the language of a ghetto and even today the relatively poor lexicon available is an objective obstacle even for the most unprejudiced translatorµ. This study, therefore, aims to investigate the ways in which the linguistic representations of homosexuality have been negotiated across time and space comparing the source language and dubbed versions of Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman to ascertain whether those obstacles have been overcome and if so, how.

The paper outlines the textual and linguistic specificities of museum (or art) audio description (AD), an emergent AD subgenre. The focus of the paper, however, is on the didactic potentials of this form of audiovisual translation in an English L2 setting. If exploited adequately, the process of producing and translating ADs into a non-mother tongue can in fact favour the acquisition of both intersemiotic and inverse translation competence while granting the retention and retrieval of diverse L1 and L2 linguistic forms thanks to the noticing effect that working with AD can induce. A case study on the creation in Italian and the translation into English of a multimodal descriptive itinerary illustrates how museum AD can be employed for explicit and implicit learning purposes, in order to impart professional skills to novice translators.

From the late 1940s onwards an increasing number of Italian and Italian majority co-production films reached the UK in an English-language version. These films belonged to different genres (e.g., historical epics, crime melodramas, mythological films, westerns) and were marketed to diverse audiences of mainstream and art-house cinemas across the country. Historical findings reveal that one of the main causes of dissatisfaction for British film critics reviewing these films was the confusing array of accents and varieties of English used. This study argues that the existence of multiple varieties of English is the result of significant re-alignments in the international film trade which took place during the 1950s and 60s. As a result, Italian films were dubbed either in London, Rome or New York, relying on the local availability and experience of translators, adapters, voice talents and direction. This study argues that the so-called “usual hubbub of accentsµ was the result of the complex transnational identity of Italian films produced during this period, but also ensued from the powerful control exercised by American producers and distributors over casting, localisation, and marketing decisions. Historical research into the reception of dubbed Italian films in the UK allows us to understand not only the material and cultural circumstances contributing to the unpopularity of dubbing, but also subsequent developments in the localisation and exhibition of non- English-language films in this country.